


In Love and Death We Don’t Decide

by PardonMyManners



Series: Lost [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dany as the Mad Queen, Drama, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I Didn't Choose The Angst life, Romance, Smut, The Angst Life Chose Me, This one made my heart hurt guys, based off of some leaks for the end of season 8, now essentially show canon, past Jon/Dany, trying to make something nice out of the garbage of season 8, we're all here just trying to make ourselves better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18863311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PardonMyManners/pseuds/PardonMyManners
Summary: Her siblings arrive like leaves carried on a sudden breeze, alighting upon the placidity of her life and casting wide ripples before being swept away again. Their movements are cyclic, changing and shifting like the seasons, but one thing will never change: Winterfell is home.





	In Love and Death We Don’t Decide

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Based off some of the leaks concerning the final episode of season 8. 
> 
> There may be more parts of this in the future. 
> 
> Every song by Dermot Kennedy is about Jonsa, sorry, I don't make the rules.
> 
> UPDATE: So this fic is basically show canon now except Sansa is the Lady of Winterfell not the Queen in the North (which I love, by the way, but I decided to leave the fic as is).

_I could have told you ‘bout the long nights_

_How no one loves the birds that don't rise_

_So you can tell the heroes go hide_

_My sense of wonder's just a little tired_

_-_ Lost, Dermot Kennedy

 

Her siblings arrive like leaves carried on a sudden breeze, alighting upon the placidity of her life and casting wide ripples before being swept away again. Their movements are cyclic, changing and shifting like the seasons, but one thing will never change: Winterfell is home.

\---

Arya is standing by the window in her chambers, the hour late, and Sansa clutches at her chest as she lifts her head and steps into the room.

 

“ _Must_ you always frighten me half to death?”

 

Arya turns, hands tucked against the small of her back, her face a mask of eerie stillness that is broken only by a sardonic half-smile. Her hair has grown longer since Sansa saw her last, and her simple clothes are well worn with travel. The sword Jon had once given her is tucked against one hip with her infamous Valyrian steel dagger at the other.

 

“I see you’ve rebuilt the gardens.”

 

Sansa sighs, tugging at the laces of her gown, eager to be free of it. It had been a long, trying day full of petitions and endless concerns over the harvest; simple, earthy matters that drew her back to a different time, when her mother and father would speak of such things over super and she would work at her stitches, hardly paying it any attention. Such memories seemed almost a dream; conjurings of an injured, tired mind. Certainly her life had never been so tame, so safe.

 

“We finished the repairs a fortnight ago. We’ll be done with the walls in two, maybe three moons.”

 

“You’ve redone the hall a bit, I noticed.” Arya steps around Sansa’s sitting table, dragging one pale, scared finger across its surface. Not for the first time, Sansa wonders where it is her sister goes, what it is she does when she leaves for months and months at a time, but she had learned long ago not to ask questions for which she does not want the answer.

 

More, she fears if she presses Arya, if she asks too many questions, she may stop coming and Sansa’s loneliness has already grown crippling, crushing even. Robbing her of breath at night, as though the weight of everyone she’s ever loved and lost is sitting on her chest. Until she is almost certain she cannot bear it any longer.

 

“I like it,” Arya says, something akin to a true smile tugging at her lips, and some of that rigidity leaks from her. Sansa wonders if Arya returns home to remind herself of who she is, or, at the very least, who she used to be.

 

“Come,” Sansa says, waving toward the seats near the hearth fire, “the new Prince of Dorne sent casks of wine I haven’t dared open yet.”

 

Arya huffs out a laugh. “Another proposal of marriage?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Doesn’t know how to take no for an answer, does he?” There is something sharp in Arya’s tone that makes Sansa smirk as she pours them each a full glass of Dorne’s finest.

 

“No need to slit his throat, Arya. Most men don’t know how to take no for an answer, and his letters are pleasant enough. I imagine it’s his advisers who press him to keep up the romantic assault. Besides, I quite like the wine.”

 

Arya chuckles and raises her glass when Sansa does. “To the foolishness of men.”

 

“And the wisdom of women,” Arya adds with a smirk.

 

She stays nearly two moons. Haunting the halls most nights, but helping with the repairs and seeing to several smaller matters in Sansa’s name. Every night they share dinner together, settled in her chambers and some nights they stay up and talk all night, remembering the ones they’d lost. Some nights they stare into the flames and say nothing at all.

 

“I… have a favor to ask of you,” Arya says one night, long after the rest of the household had gone to bed, and Sansa looks up from her stitching.

 

“Is it a new tunic? Because I have several set aside for you. That one looks as though it might fall apart at any moment.”

 

Aray shoots her a dirty look before glancing at the floor. Sansa is alarmed to see there is color high in her cheeks and her fingers are fiddling with the blanket draped across the back of her chair. Sansa hasn’t seen her look so uncertain since they were girls. If she weren’t quietly alarmed, she might have been amused.

 

Arya draws in a breath and meets her eyes, shoulders tensing. “I was, well, I’d _hoped_ that maybe… you might, well, _ugh_ , I was hoping you might be willing to teach me to dance.” She strings this last bit together so quickly that Sansa is almost certain she’s misheard her.

 

“You want me to teach you to… dance?”

 

Arya wavers visibly. “Yes…”

 

“But… _why?_ ”

 

Her sister’s eyes narrow dangerously. “To teach bandits how to do a jig before I run them through, why do you _think_ I want to learn to dance.”

 

“I honestly have no idea, Arya. You always _hated_ dancing.”

 

Arya deflates, looking rather petulant. “I’m sure I will _still_ hate it, but, well, there is this… _thing_ Gendry is having at Storm’s End-”

 

“Is this  _thing_  a ball?” Sansa asks, trying not to laugh, and instantly presses her lips together when Arya throws her a sharp, almost defensive look.

 

“Never mind, it’s stupid, I was never any good at dancing anyway-”

 

“Arya, I’ve see you use that sword enough times to know you’d be an excellent dancer.” Sansa says primly, setting her stitching aside and rising to her feet. “Come on, help me move the chairs. I’ll show you some of the most common Southern dances and maybe even a few of the Northern ones.”

 

\--

 

Jon only ever visits in an official capacity, as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and never as her once brother. Their people now regard him with a mixture of awe and something akin to fear, and he has become almost a stranger to them. Sansa would almost loathe his visits if she were not so desperate for them. To see him as he is now, nearly broken, a ghost of a man, makes her want to weep.

 

“We’ve need of more men, and grain if you’ve enough to spare,” he tells her, voice thick with fatigue, shoulders slumped, his eyes careful never to catch hers. They meet in her father’s study, Eddard Stark's old desk now strewn with her notes and ledgers, pots of ink and a scattering of quills dotting the mess like tiny wayward islands. There are nights where she falls asleep at that desk and wakes with parchment stuck to her cheek and a fierce crick in her neck. Long, lonely nights, where the shadows creep in on her and the ghosts rattle in the branches of the godswood.

 

She lays a gentle hand on his arm before she can think better of it and he tenses instantly beneath her touch. She withdraws as if stung; part of her had only wished to reassure herself he was real, that she was not alone. Still, a foolish slip -she should have known better than to touch him.

 

“Rest first, we will speak in the morning,” she tells him, unable to look at him either, clenching her hands before her and staring instead out the window as the sun begins to set. How distant they have become. How detached.

 

He doesn’t argue, merely shuffles away in his thick black cloak, looking decades older than his six and twenty. She stands there, alone in her study for a long, long while, feeling utterly consumed by her isolation.

\--

Jon never stays long, taking what he needs and departing. His ravens are always impersonal and short, deftly avoiding any of her more personal questions, and she wonders if there is anything left of the man he’d once been.

 

She knows, deep inside herself, that it falls to her and her alone to remind him of who he is, who they are together -the last and broken few to survive the ending of the world as they’d known it. The last of the Starks, for all that he may be a Targaryen.

 

“I’ve a gift,” she tells him with an air of cheer that sounds false even to her ears as she squints in the dim light of the stables. They are alone as he saddles his horse and he barely spares her a glance.

 

“I have no need of gifts,” he tells her, gruff, dismissive, but she is not deterred.

 

She holds the bundle out to him, trying not to feel foolish. “Some new tunics for you, and I’ve already loaded the wagon with Dornish wine. I’ve plenty of it and I’m sure your men and the Free Folk would enjoy it.”

 

Jon stares at the wrapped parcel in her hands, eyes flashing with something akin to frustration, before taking it roughly from her. “You needn’t have troubled yourself, and the men have no need of fine spirits, our ale suits us just fine.”

 

Sansa feels heat rise in her chest and face and she resists the urge to bow her head and flee. She has come too far to be cowed by him now, however. “Your men deserve a bit of reward for a hard and thankless life, I think,” anger sparks as she speaks, “and give the tunics to someone else if you find them so distasteful.”

 

She turns on her heel, guilt warring with disappointment, but Jon snatches her roughly by the arm. He pulls her close, shockingly close, and his eyes are blazing. “What is it that you want from me, Sansa?”

 

Though he’s startled her, she rallies herself quickly. She’s faced far worse men than he. “I want you to remember who you are… who _we_ are.”

 

His face contorts; anger and grief and something she might almost swear is desperation warring on his features before he releases her and steps away.

 

" _W_ _e_ are nothing, Sansa. I don’t need or want your pity, so leave me be.”

 

Sansa straightens, carefully controlling the deep disappointment and hurt in her that aches like an old wound torn open anew.

 

“Return for the harvest, we will have more grain for you then,” she says, her tone devoid of emotion.

 

He doesn’t look at her as he leads his horse past her and into the courtyard. His shoulder lightly brushes hers, a brief shock of contact that makes her knees tremble. She feels so far removed sometimes that she isn’t even certain she’s even real, alive, solid.

 

“As you say, Lady Stark,” he murmurs. 

 

Though she tells herself it's foolish, utterly pointless to do so, she watches his departure from the walls, pressing her hands to the cold, damp stone, fighting back a ridiculous wave of tears.

 

 _I am so tired of being alone_.

 

On the northern crest, outlined by the horizon, Jon’s horse pauses and, despite the distance, she can tell he has turned toward Winterfell. She freezes, breath caught in her throat, and she wonders vaguely if he can see her. If he is looking for the shock of her hair against the pale gray light of dawn. If he wishes he could give voice to his regrets, too.

 

After a long, timeless moment, he turns his horse and is gone, taking that fleeting brush of hope with him.

 

\--

 

Bran, the man who had once been her brother and who is now her King, visits two years after his crowning.  He is not a man for parties and frivolity, but they hold a feast in his honor, their people shooting him wary, almost awed glances the entire night, too unsure of themselves to really enjoy the occasion. It is a muted, simple affair, and all the while Sansa is aware that his visit can not be without a higher purpose.

 

“A child,” he says on the very night of his arrival, never looking away from the hearth fire in the chambers she’d prepared for him.

 

A quiver of trepidation passes through her, tempered by annoyance. She hasn’t the time for prophecies and riddles.

 

“A child?”

 

Her brother looks slowly away from the flames. He is not dressed like a king but he looks well enough in his simple tunic, his hair carefully combed and groomed, and Sansa wonder’s absently who cares for him in such a way. It is an oddly territorial, almost maternal feeling, and she quickly suppresses it. Bran has no need for her mothering, no matter how much she might secretly like to provide it.

 

He has done well for the battered people of King’s Landing; or so Tyrion tells her in their monthly ravens. The people revere him almost as a god, a living breathing deity. Such things make her uneasy, for all that he is her brother.

 

 _Only he isn’t, is he? Not anymore._  

 

“Yes,” he says in his disarmingly toneless way. “You will have a child. A girl. She will be very important.”

 

A thousand conflicting emotions catch in her throat and it takes her a long moment before she can speak. She focuses on the least personally disturbing statement.

 

“Important how?”

 

Bran blinks and looks away again, back toward the flames. Moving, as he always does, as though he lives in a dream. “She will be my heir.”

 

Sansa quietly grips the back of a nearby chair for support, feeling a bit ill. “Another Three Eyed Raven?”

 

He gives the smallest shake of his head. “No. That is the path of another. Your daughter will be Queen. A good Queen, she will be what the people need.”

 

 _Better a Queen than a shell of a person,_ she thinks, still reeling. “And who is to be the father of this child?”

 

“You would not believe me if I told you.”

 

Sansa presses her eyes closed, praying to the gods for strength. “Is there anything else I should know, Your Grace?” she manages to grind out.

 

He turns toward her again, staring at her silently for so long she almost turns and leaves, before finally saying, slowly, as if he is unsure of himself, “The boy… the boy will be yours... and you will not be so lonely. You will find your peace, Sansa Stark.”

 

\--

Jon comes with the harvest and the late summer storms.

 

By then, Sansa has almost forgotten Bran’s prophecy, consumed with the reality of too few hands and not enough skilled workers to properly contend with their wheat fields. Even Sansa, along with the rest of her household, must aid in the process.

 

She’s helping one of the kitchen maids, Tyana, tie a massive sheave of wheat when Jon’s shadow falls over her. She shields her eyes with one hand and squints at him from where she squats on the ground, holding the wheat together with her free arm as the other woman works on knotting it with a thick piece of twine. Her back aches, her thighs burn, she has all manner of debris in her hair, and sweat gathers on her brow and the small of her back. Jon Snow is looking at her as though he’s never seen her before.  

 

“Sansa?”

 

“Hello Jon,” she says cheerfully, grunting as Tyana nearly tugs the bushel out of her arms. “It’s secure, my lady,” the other woman announces, wiping the sweat from her brow and sparing Jon barely a glance. The two of them heave the sheave between and load it onto the back of a nearby wagon, a maneuver they had performed all afternoon. Jon watches them, mouth slightly open as Sansa turns to face him, brushing her hands off on her stained and rumpled dress, the hem of which she’d tucked into her belt.

 

“You’re a few weeks early,” she tells him, attempting to ignore how the people around them have stopped to stare with unabashed interest.

 

“I… thought I might be of help.”

 

Sansa cocks her head and smiles, some foolish part of her happy to see him despite their last parting. _He belongs here_ , a voice says within, _he’s always belonged here_. “And so you might. I’m sure your skill with a sword will translate nicely to a scythe.”

 

He grimaces and she laughs despite herself, the farmers and soldiers around them joining in until even Jon can’t help but to smile. To see it sets her heart afloat, even if it is fleeting.

 

That night there is feasting and drinking in Winter Town, the melody of a lute and fiddle echoing through the muddy streets. Despite being weary to her bones, Sansa laughs and mingles, sharing in the simple happiness of her people and drinking sweet mead from an earthenware goblet a child gifts her. To worry over simple things again is a great relief, she thinks, allowing Tyana to pull her into a circling chain of smiling dancers.

 

For a few blissful moments she permits herself to forget. To just _be_ . To find a measure of enjoyment in a life that feels, some days, like a punishment for crimes committed and failures endured. _This might have been my life_ , she thinks, stained skirts swirling about her legs and tangled hair fanning in a flaming arch as she spins and spins and spins until she feels like she might be floating. _I could have been born the daughter of a farmer or perhaps a carpenter. I might have disappeared, lived a simpler kind of life, married a blacksmith and had a bushel of children far away from the politics and the betrayal._

 

Eventually she returns to the present, to the reality of who she is, and frees herself from the fray, brushing the hair from her face and trying to catch her breath. She turns and finds that Jon is watching her from the shadows, leaning against a stone fence just outside the circle of firelight, eyes gleaming like stars. His expression is hard to read across the distance and she hesitates a long moment before approaching him, stealing a few cups of mead on the way, feeling strangely shy.

 

 _What if we’d been born to a different sort of life? What might we have been to each other?_ Such thoughts are beyond dangerous, of course. Her life is what she has made it, she is who she has shaped herself to be, there is no use in dreaming of another, different fate. No use in hoping for more than she has. 

 

Jon offers her a restrained smile and accepts her proffered goblet when she reaches his side, ducking his head in a gesture that is so familiar that it makes her chest clench. “I never thought to see you dancin’ in the town square.”

 

“Or tying and loading sheaves of wheat, I’m sure” she says, leaning on the wall next to him and taking a long sip of her drink, the honey wine warming her belly and easing the ache in her back and feet. As tired as she is, it is a good, honest tired, the kind that ensures she’ll fall asleep without nightmares. Or so she hopes.

 

She can feel Jon’s eyes on her and they make her feel clumsy, unsure of herself. They make her acutely aware of her sun-reddened nose and cheeks, her windblown hair and simple, too large dress. She hardly looks like a dignified lady.

 

“Thank you for your help today,” she ventures, when the silence stretches too long.

 

He takes a sip of mead, cupping the goblet in his large, scared hands. “I did little enough.”

 

He’d been a great help, of course, and she purses her lips. “Will you stay long?”

 

“Only till the winnowing, then I’ll take what you can spare and go. We’ve new volunteers from King’s Landing arriving soon.”

 

She arches a brow. “Volunteers?”

 

Jon’s mouth quirks slightly at the corners and she finds that she likes the way the light from the bonfire softens and warms his face, gleaming in his dark eyes. He’d unlaced the top of his black tunic, pale skin bright in the darkness, and several curls of his thick hair lie across his brow, having broken free of the tie secured at the back of his head. “Aye,” he says wryly, “times have certainly changed.”

 

His words dampen the mood instantly as they both realize just how much things _had_ changed, how much they had lost -all the terrible things that had let to this moment. She drains her goblet, trying to banish the memories.

 

 _Will we never be free of the dead and gone_ ? _Will we never have a moment that is not stained with blood and ash and fire?_  

 

Jon looks out across the dancing rings of people, eyes arching skyward as thunder rumbles ominously. They’d seen the storm coming that afternoon and stored the wheat in several storehouses, but they’d hoped it might veer further south; it was uncommon for rain this late in the year. Their eyes meet as the first crack of lightning breaks the sky, the music and laughter silenced in the aftermath, her ears ringing, and something tentative and…  potentially devastating passes between them. Droplets of rain begin to fall, breaking the breathless quality of the moment, and it’s a signal for people to retreat indoors. Sansa and Jon are caught in the tide that drifts back toward the castle, and she's jostled and harried before her guard captain spots her and eases her through the mayhem. She loses sight of Jon for a time, seeing to household matters as the rain begins to fall steadily, shrinking and enclosing the world around them.

 

She’s back in her father’s study -she still can not think of it as her own, for all that she is the Lady of Winterfell- when Jon finds her bent over a poorly written scroll in Lord Cerwyn’s sloppy hand.

 

“It’s good the harvest went well today, this storm might have ruined the fields,” he says by way of greeting, and they both turn toward the partially opened window as rain pours in silvery sheets outside. Sansa likes the sound; it helps to drown out the voices within.

 

They are both still dressed in the dirty clothing they’d worn that day -Jon has a smudge of dirt along the left side of his jaw- and Sansa feels sticky and uncomfortable beneath her gown. She’s suddenly desperate for a bath, conscious of how unkempt she must look beneath his stare, but there are ledgers to see to. Always there are ledgers.

 

“Come,” she says, motioning toward the seat on the other side of the desk, “we will go over the ledgers and see what we might spare.”

 

He hesitates for a moment before striding across the room and settling at the edge of the seat, suddenly unable to meet her eye.

 

His discomfort is catching, and Sansa struggles to find the right words to say.

 

“How much remains in your storehouses?” he asks at last.

 

“Not much, not after the Night King,” she says, rubbing the fingers of one hand against her temple as she fishes particular piece of parchment free, scanning the numbers scrawled there. “With the harvest, we can perhaps spare… forty barrels of grain, some of the flour and barley, and perhaps some of the salted pork.”

 

Jon braces his elbows on his knees, fingers lacing together as his head hangs. “Don’t worry about the pork or barley, the grain and flour are more than enough.”

 

Sansa frowns and sets the parchment aside, studying him critically. “Your Maester says your stores are dangerously low, Jon, let me help you.”

 

His head snaps up. “You spoke with my Maester?”

 

“Of course; you didn’t provide me with any specifics and I wanted to be sure that you-”

 

Jon stands swiftly, pushing his chair away with a loud scrape that startles her into silence. “You undermined my authority is what you did,” he says coolly, jaw clenched and eyes flashing. “I told you what I wished you to know.”

 

“I did no such thing,” she says with forced calm. “I simply wanted to help-”

 

“Haven’t I made it clear enough that I don’t want your bloody help” Jon snaps, voice rising and a tense silence follows as she battles her temper back. He turns his back to her, pacing a few steps away, a hand smoothing over his beard.

 

Sansa draws on her courage. “Why do you push me away, Jon? Might we not be there for one anoth-”

 

Jon rounds on her, his face suddenly animated with life, his eyes bright and terrible. “You betrayed me, Sansa. I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

 

Ice trickles down her back and her gut clenches; she knows they are no longer speaking of food stores and Maesters. _This has been a long time coming_ , she thinks and shakes her head at him. “I did no such thing-”

 

“You swore to me,” he insists, stepping forward and punctuating his words with a stab of his finger on the desk. “You swore to me before the heart tree that you would not tell a soul of my parentage. If you hadn’t done that, then maybe, she might have-”

 

Sansa pushes away from her chair, fury replacing fear. “Are you honestly insinuating that if the truth of your birthright had not been revealed that she might not have committed mass _murder_ , Jon?”

 

He looks away, lips pursed and white. Outside, a crack of lightning brightens the sky, followed by a rumbling growl that personifies the rage building within her. But beneath that rage, that righteous anger, there is another part of her that wonders if he might not be right. It is a thought she has had many times before  -alone, in the darkness of her chambers, where all her mistakes and all her many failures have been laid bare.

 

Had she been the final nudge that pushed Daenerys Targaryen over the edge and into the maw of insanity? Her heart and mind tell her it would have only been a matter of time, that as soon as Jon confessed the truth of his birth to her, the Dragon Queen would have never sat easy while he lived. Sansa tells herself that eventually, Daenerys would have come for them all, but how can she know for true? How can any of them?

 

She rallies her courage, refusing to back down as she steps around the desk to stand before him.“The only one who refused to see her for what she was, was _you_ Jon… you and Tyrion. I did what I did to protect our family, to protect _everyone_.”

 

“Well you bloody well failed at that, didn’t you?!” he explodes, arms flailing, face contorted with rage, and pain, and a deep and endless well of grief. Lakes, and seas and oceans of it, nearly drowning out everyone and everything else.

 

Something in her snaps, a break that is almost audible in her own ears, and all she sees is red.

 

“If you had just fucking _listened_ to me,” she half screams, “even _once_ , even for a _moment_ , none of it, _none_ of it would have happened.” She steps forward, so close her skirts cover his boots on the rushes, and jabs him hard in the chest with the point of her finger. “If _you’d_ taken a moment to think with your head and not with your _prick_ you might have hesitated before you threw our _people_ at the feet of a mad woman. If I failed them, Jon, well, you failed them twice over.”

 

Jon’s eyes are wide, lips slightly parted in shock, and regret is quick on the heels of her outburst when the door to the study slams open, reverberating off the wall. They startle apart, shame flooding through her, and it takes her a long moment to read the fear in the old Maester’s face as he stands dripping in the doorway.

 

“M-my Lady, my Lord,” the Maester stutters, voice filled with panic, “t-the stores, th-their flooding! Half a foot of water already!”

 

Cold, terrible fear quenches her anger in an instant, leaving her shaking. She and Jon exchange a quick glance before they both take off into the hall, Sansa shouting orders as she runs, skirts caught up in her hands.  

 

She’s drenched the instant she steps into the courtyard, paying puddles and mud little to no heed as she hurries through the storm. Jon reaches her steward first.

 

“It’s seeping in from the courtyard!” he shouts through the deluge, motioning to the veritable lake that has formed behind him. “Wasn’t properly raised after the battle!”

 

“We need to divert the water!” Jon shouts back, her steward nodding in agreement.

 

“We’ll lose half the harvest if we don’t hurry!” Sansa adds, panic like a monster threatening to claw free and overwhelm her. “Gather as many men and women as we can muster, dig the trench towards the godswood,” she shouts, motioning with her arms how she wants the water diverted.

 

“Yes milady!” her steward cries over his shoulder, already barking out orders into the rain and darkness.

 

Sansa rounds on her guard captain, who’d just arrived and looks rather foolish in his dripping armor. “Get your men to fetch shovels, picks and hos. Quickly!” He cuts her an uncertain bow before he too hurries off.

 

She turns again, breathing hard, and she finds herself alone with Jon, marooned in the heavy downpour. His thick hair is plastered to his face and neck, eyes squinting against the water dripping from his brow. Still, she tracks the way his eyes dip from her face to follow the lines of her body through a dress that now clings to her like a second skin. Tracks the way his throat bobs and his hands clench reflexively at his sides. Suddenly, as lightning cracks overhead, she sees Jon with new eyes.

 

_It's been there... it's always been there, we just pretended it was not._

 

He takes half a step back and blinks at her, appearing almost dumbstruck for a moment before he manages to gather himself and shouts,“Get inside! I’ll organize the men!”

 

Sansa shakes her head, trying to ignore the sudden pounding of her heart, and hollers back, “We need every able hand!”

 

Jon opens his mouth, likely to argue further, but a group of men arrive with arm loads of shovels and pics and Sansa’s entire being becomes consumed with giving orders and directing men.

 

It takes hours of back breaking labor, but eventually they manage it. The trench redirects the water swiftly, draining the courtyard as two dozen men and women slump on their shovels in the rain. Sansa half stumbles toward the Great Hall, barely away of which direction she’s headed in, thinking only of warmth and a soft bed. She feels Jon at her side more than sees him, but she is too exhausted, too defeated to care, to even consider their earlier argument. The horrible things she had said to him a sting that pricks but that cannot draw her from her weary daze.

 

Her Maester is waiting for her in the study, looking grim and pale.

 

He grimaces when he sees her, dripping wet and near to falling over. He looks very much like a man who wishes very much that he could provide better news than what the truth demands.

 

“At least half the grain inside the store room has been lost, my lady… which is-”

 

“At least a third of our total harvest,” Sansa finishes numbly. She collapses into the chair by the hearth, devastated by the reality of what she’d already suspected to be true.

 

Jon steps forward then, sparing her a worried, almost tortured glance. “If the storm passes tonight, more might be saved, and if we can hang or shift some of the sheaves now, they may dry well enough to store.”

 

The Maester considers for a moment, looking to Sansa, but she is listless, hopeless, and frozen through. “Very well, My Lord, let us see what might be done.”

 

The two men hurry off and leave Sansa alone in the company of her failure.

 

_A third, likely more lost, and it was a small harvest already. I have failed them. Failed everyone…_

 

Sansa doesn’t know how long she sits there, wet and shivering, staring into the dying embers of the hearth fire when Jon comes for her, but it is long enough to have set much of the house to rest.

 

“Gods, Sansa!” he exclaims from the doorway and she slowly lifts her head, drawn from the dark abyss of her thoughts only with the greatest effort.

 

He rushes to her side and takes her hand in a shock of contact that has her gasping, feeling return with a sudden snap that leaves her reeling. “You’re frozen through!”

 

“I f-f-failed,” she murmurs through chattering teeth.

 

He shakes his head jerkily in denial, hair flinging droplets of water, and Sansa begins to sob. She cannot help it, and it is a wretched, broken sound that leaks out of her, that tears its way free as she slumps in on herself.

 

“L-leave me be,” she begs him through her tears. Wishing she might, in that moment, simply disappear. Certain it would be better for everyone.

 

But Jon does not leave her as she might have expected, as she likely deserves. Instead he leans up and forward and gather’s her in his arms, holding her so tight she almost can’t breathe, and she clutches at him and cries until she has no tears to spare.

 

He takes her face in his hands, gentle and cold. “You will be fine, Sansa. You’ll carry on as you always have-”

 

She feels like a nerve left exposed and naked as she pushes away from him, rising on legs that are numbed through and barley responsive to her commands.

 

“I carry on because I must!” she cries, “I do what must be done because what other choice have I? To do any less, Jon, would be a stain upon their memory. To stop living after they gave their lives for ours, is the _highest_ dishonor.” She turns to him in the near darkness, the fire, like the light inside her, nearly gone out. “So I try, I _try_ to make a life, I try to help my people and to find some sense of peace. But most nights, Jon, most nights I wish it had been me.” She presses a hand to her breast, the truth of her pain and agony flowing free and violent “I wish I’d been the one to die so that they might live, so that they might do what I _know_ I cannot.”

 

Jon rises to his feet and takes one long step toward her, close enough that she can smell the warmth of his skin, can see the droplets of water caught in his closely trimmed beard. “Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again.”

 

“As if you care how I feel,” she sneers at him, “as if you don’t wish the same. As if you would not trade my life for Robb’s or-”

 

“Enough, Sansa, enough!” he shouts at her, grabbing her by the arms and giving her a slight shake, and his eyes _burn_ out at her, scorching her skin. “It was wrong to blame you for my failures,” he says, fingers still dug into her arms and Sansa feels warm all over, her knees beginning to tremble -whether from exhaustion or something else, she isn’t sure. “I _hate_ myself for not listening when I ought to have. I can not sleep most nights for self loathing, knowing I should have paid your advice more heed. I hate myself for loving her when I-” his voice catches and breaks and his eyes squeeze shut as he inhales shakily.

 

They are very close together, dripping water into a growing puddle on the floor, alone in the semi darkness, and she reaches up a hand to cup his face as if in a dream. She feels jittery, undone, desperate for something she is too afraid to name, though the truth of it pulls and tugs at her consciousness.

 

_I have been so alone. Not just now, here, but since father died._

 

“We...we must let it go, Jon,” she croaks. “Let the blame die and the dead rest.” She blinks back a sudden wave of tears, hearing the truth in her own words, so much easier in thought than practice. “I-I am sorry for what I said to you, I shouldn’t have… it wasn’t true, not really. Y-you brought me back to myself, after Ramsey came so near to breaking me... you gave me hope.”

 

His eyes open, filled with hesitation and an acute, terrible longing that amplifies and echoes her own. Sansa brushes her thumb across his damp cheek, almost as a test, for him, yes, but for her too. To see what they might do, should she dare the chasm between them. He tenses, freezing, breath held.

 

Her lips part on a shaky exhale as she repeats the motion, slower now, and with purpose. Jon’s eyes darken, his throat bobs, and she feels as though the world is tilting beneath her.

 

“I should have listened,” he says, voice gone rough in a way that has her other hand reaching and finding, clutching at his chest. The heat of him through his rain-soaked tunic is intense, dizzying, and she teeters toward him, a crumbling tower caught in a violent storm. She is powerless to keep herself from tumbling and falling into turbulent seas and she almost welcomes the collapse.  

 

The hands clutching her arms loosen and shift, running uncertainly, clumsily up her shoulders and then slowly down her back to her hips, squeezing lightly. Heat, tender and new, flares to life between thighs that tremble.

 

“W-we both should have,” she replies, hardly aware of what she’s saying, eyes on his lips, head swimming with his nearness, which drowns out the alarm bells peeling anxiously at the back of her mind. _I don’t care_ , she thinks hazily as he shifts closer still, his nose brushing along hers and she tips her mouth toward his in a silent invitation. _I don’t care that he was my brother. That he loved another. That he will never love me. I don’t care._ “Jon, I-”

 

His lips crash messily against hers and she loses all sense of herself, allowing the storm to sweep her up and away. She flings her arms up around his neck, clutching at him wildly, desperately. Fingers, teeth and nails scrape and collide. It’s a messy, graceless tangle of tongues and limbs and she whimpers at the sudden burst of warmth and life. She hadn’t known how cold she was, how detached she’d grown, and it’s all consuming, his touch, his nearness.

 

He crowds her back against the desk, his hands seemingly everywhere, clutching, tugging, caressing, driving her mad, driving her perilously close to the edge of something for which she has no name. She lifts herself up and back, knocking over pots of ink and breaking at least one quill but she’d do far worse to keep him here with her like this, reminding her what it means to feel, to _want_. He groans as she palms him through his damp trousers and he tangles a fist in her hair, tugging her head back roughly and running his tongue sloppily up her throat, teeth scraping. She gasps and arches against him, adjusting her fingers to tug at his laces, desperate for more. Desperate to have him inside her, filling some of the emptiness that has consumed her for far too long.

 

He pulls away slightly, looking down as she fumbles, dazed and unsteady before he shuffles back enough to allow her room to work. She finally manages to loosen the knot, struggling between the wet and cold, and they both moan aloud as she slips a hand against his taunt stomach and grips him tight. His head falls to her shoulder as he gives a violent shake.

 

“Jon,” she breaths, learning the feel of him, stroking along his length, fingers dancing, making him tremble and shudder. “Please...please, I need-”

 

He breaks her off with another violent kiss, gripping her face so hard it almost hurts as he plunders her mouth. Then he’s fumbling with her skirts, tugging them upward around her hips, one hand slipping between them, rough palm dragging along her thigh and delving into her smalls. The first stroke of his fingers against her leaves her gasping and reeling and he growls like a predator at the scent of blood. The world blurs and shifts in broken snatches of comprehension as she hooks her leg around his hip, urging him toward her, and he lifts her a little, the head of his cock rubbing against her, leaving her wondering vaguely where her smalls had gone.

 

The moment brightens, focuses, slowing as she lifts her hips further, as he grips her thigh and hikes it higher against him, and then he’s inside her, stretching and filling and she feels as though she might be dying. He doesn’t pause, doesn't hesitate as he pulls back and slams into her again, making her cry out, the sound broken and hoarse. He groans her name, teeth nipping at her taut nipples through her dress, and she drags his mouth back to hers, panting and moaning and writhing against him, chasing that building, hot tension he’s awoken inside her. He presses a finger between them, finding the humming note of her pleasure with ease, and the world fractures and shatters as her head falls back and a cry is ripped from her throat.

 

Jon shifts a little and begins to thrust into her wildly, the fingers on her hips bruising and taunt as he holds her captive, face buried in her neck and his beard scraping across her sensitized skin. His breath paints her skin as he pants and groans, mumbling nonsense -much of it filthy, the rest incomprehensible. She comes a second time, almost sobbing at the intensity of it before he finally stiffens and groans long and loud into her chest, and she clutches him there, holding him close, safe, inside and against her. And for one shining moment, she is whole.

 

Her breath settles and her heartbeat slows and he pulls a little aback until their eyes meet in the dark, both of them stripped of their pretenses, laid bare and vulnerable. It’s in that moment that Bran’s words crash over her.  

 

_You will have a child. A girl. She will be very important…_

 

_You wouldn’t believe me if I told you._

 

She tenses at the memory, recoils from it as though burned by it, and Jon immediately withdraws, slipping from inside her and leaving her empty and cold, his seed like a brand on her thigh as it leaks free of her.

 

He steps away, taking the warmth with him, hands clumsily adjusting himself as his eyes widen with sudden and terrible understanding. The regret and guilt in his eyes is like a dagger straight to her heart.

 

Sansa slips from the desk to stand on legs that quake, letting her skirts fall as a blush rises hot and shameful to her face. Jon stares at her, mouth open as though to speak and she braces herself for what he might say.

 

Instead he presses his eyes shut, as though he cannot bear to look at her, his fists clenching at his side as a pained expression suffuses his features, before turning on his heel and fleeing. Sansa stares after him for a long moment before she collapses against the desk behind her, trying to gather together the shattered pieces of her armor, wondering what might become of them now.

 

 _Don’t leave me, Jon_ , some desperate voice calls from within. _I’m afraid of who I am without you, of what I might become._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are lovely and so are you. :D


End file.
